@Samurai_Crow

Sounds like you had a good idea. Commoodre weren't around by the 1998 DevCon. I don't know how this went wrong.

My idea is simpler in that it just invovles text files. It could easily be retrofitted to the existing OS model by running an extra script that looks for startup scripts and executes them.

The dynamic assigns would need system integration. OS4 already asks about a non existent assign. So a hook into the system would check local directory assign lists. This could be an assign list file or even a soft link pointed to the the right place named after the assign.

@cdimauro

Quote:

Please, don't let me laugh you too. As I said before, Linux is NOT POSIX-compliant only because of the arrogance of its dictator.

Actually, depending on how you use Linux, it may not be POSIX-compliant at all. Open a bash shell or run a bash script? That's not POSIX-compliant.

@cdimauro

Quote:

Linux is NOT POSIX-compliant!

Hate to be that girl (No I dont!) but.....
Linux CAN be Posix compliant. Case point Inspur K-UX.
Also worth of mentioning that there is a special place in hell for people who thought that abomination is a good idea.

Yes, I had a customer who demanded using it.

Last edited by Rose on 28-Oct-2020 at 05:45 PM.

@Rose

EulerOS as well, in 2016.

Huawei KunLun EulerOS 2.0 Operating System Passes UNIX Certification

_________________
"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

@bison

There has been few of em. First one I remember seeing was sometime late 90's. Tho can't remember name since like other examples, none of em has been relevant in bigger picture. If one has seriously needed certified Unix/Posix, they have gone with usual suspects for proper support too.

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: OS3.2 needs and OS4 should have had in the beginning is something like fstab.d and other dirs.

Isn’t that exactly what DEVS:DOSDrivers is?


Quote:

User-Startup should be as obsolete as Mountlist by now.

On my systems I have a directory S:User-Startups - anyone can do this already.

I also have a directory S:Shell-Startups

Just about everything you ask for is already possible I believe.

_________________
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@Hypex Quote:

Hypex wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Please, don't let me laugh you too. As I said before, Linux is NOT POSIX-compliant only because of the arrogance of its dictator. Actually, depending on how you use Linux, it may not be POSIX-compliant at all. Open a bash shell or run a bash script? That's not POSIX-compliant.

Sorry, I don't get this scenario and why it shouldn't be POSIX-compliant.

About being POSIX-compliant I was referring to some Linux APIs which don't work as specified on POSIX (the funny thing is that at least for one important of those APIa there's a patch since years to make it POSIX-compliant, but "the dictator" refused to integrate it on master).


@Rose Quote:

Rose wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Linux is NOT POSIX-compliant! Hate to be that girl (No I dont!) but..... Linux CAN be Posix compliant. Case point Inspur K-UX. Also worth of mentioning that there is a special place in hell for people who thought that abomination is a good idea. Yes, I had a customer who demanded using it.

I didn't know Inspur K-UX. I assume that they are maintaining a set of patches to make Linux's APIs fully POSIX-compliant.

@cdimauro

Quote:

I didn't know Inspur K-UX. I assume that they are maintaining a set of patches to make Linux's APIs fully POSIX-compliant.

Not only that. Also userland bit different than your regular Linux distros. Pain to maintain but when client pays enoug.....

@Rose: understood (and I agree). Thanks for the interesting information.

@kolla

Quote:

Isn?t that exactly what DEVS:DOSDrivers is?

Yes, but I was just using it as an example. Should have looked for a closer example. Is init.d still around?

Quote:

On my systems I have a directory S:User-Startups - anyone can do this already.

A good idea. I think it should be standard. And there needs to be some installer support. I mean anyone can make up a de facto standard doing exactly the same thing. But what's to say Amiga developers will take up this standard that I will l call EasyInstaller?

@cdimauro

Quote:

Sorry, I don't get this scenario and why it shouldn't be POSIX-compliant.

Bash shells have extensions that break POSIX compliance. I found this out the hard after writing a big script. I tested commands as working in the Bash shell and added it to my script as I went along. Then I found out when I ran the script it broke and something was wrong. It turned out I had written a mostly POSIX script, with a /bin/sh, then tried to put some Bashisms in it. I also needed at that point to work with a list or array. But arrays are a Bashism and not POSIX. I decided to leave it as pure POSIX and adapt it to what I needed.

This link is a long but informative explanation as to what is POSIX.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DashAsBinSh

This link is a short explanation of the differences.

http://www.etalabs.net/sh_tricks.html

I was watching the amiwest stream.
I saw a clear roadmap there.

1. make money. most developers have no any money. many have no work. they want to work and make money. I personally welcome this, although judging by the amiwest chat in the US, now the apocalypse.

2. finally achieve SMP support. in fact it was already done by the AROS developers in 2017. but has no implementation acceptable for commercial and mass use. this is really the number 1 task for amiga and there is nothing more important than it. this allows you to reuse existing equipment and sell old things with new (declared) performance. it will support the market, increase the volume of the software and force a lot to be rewritten. in other words will fill the market with life.

3. protect the environment around amigaos 4 and 3.1.4. this environment needs legal protection as well. any processes can take place inside it, preferably with a bias towards piracy and free software. a story about the fact that the pirates did not allow someone to bullshit. piracy and open-source accelerates the market. if you do not see the first economy of the World - China before your eyes, then I am not a doctor for you.

In the remainder we have: Money, Technology, Open-Source. The first is proposed to be spent on the second and third. IMHO this has always worked and looks like a good roadmap. particulars can be refined along the way. at exhibitions amiwest, for example

p.S. oh yes, I forgot to clarify: Linux is kernel.
p.P.S. besides the POSIX standard there is also https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/lsb.shtml. Strictly speaking posix is not related to the Linux ecosystem, this is a historical legacy.

Last edited by aGGreSSor on 29-Oct-2020 at 08:14 PM.
Last edited by aGGreSSor on 29-Oct-2020 at 08:03 PM.
Last edited by aGGreSSor on 29-Oct-2020 at 08:02 PM.

_________________
--
AmigaOS 3.9, AmigaOS 4.1FE and AROS One

Quote:

Hypex wrote: A good idea. I think it should be standard. And there needs to be some installer support. I mean anyone can make up a de facto standard doing exactly the same thing. But what's to say Amiga developers will take up this standard that I will l call EasyInstaller?

There already is a standard and it is not being followed enough. Most programs should use PROGDIR: and access directories and files relative to it (allows simpler installs and moving installed directories of programs too). Libraries and other modules shared by multiple programs go in directories which already have their assigns (maybe there should be a SYSLIBS: and LIBS: for example for better organization). Workbench 2.0 added support for PROGDIR: and the Amiga User Interface Style Guide specifies standards to be used. Is better programmer education needed or a certification for standards compliance?

There were a few programs which needed an assign like those started at bootup from the WBStartup drawer. There should be a GUI preference with drag and drop to add programs to start at bootup instead of moving them to WBStartup. This maintains the installation structure of these programs and avoids the need for an assign. I believe AmigaOS 4.1 added a new Start-up preferences feature which replaced the old WBStartup drawer like this?

Assigns in S:User-Startup should be user assigns for convenience and rarely, if ever, program installation assigns.

Last edited by matthey on 29-Oct-2020 at 08:43 PM.

@Hypex

Yeah, it's easy to slip in some "bashisms" and not even realize it. When using dash, my shell prompt (PS1) looks like this:

\[\033[38;5;22m\]\u@\h\[\]\[\033[38;5;15m\] \[\]\[\033[38;5;22m\]\w\[\]\[\033[38;5;15m\] \[\]\[\033[38;5;22m\]$\[\]\[\033[38;5;15m\] \[\]

Last edited by bison on 29-Oct-2020 at 08:36 PM.

_________________
"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

Here's what I noticed: each of us talks to ourselves)

_________________
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AmigaOS 3.9, AmigaOS 4.1FE and AROS One

Resources like libraries, classes, fonts etc are a little nightmare... you start a program and it says it requires at least reqtools.library 38, and sure enough “version reqtools.library” says you have 37.5 so you check libs: and you have 39.3, you try “avail flush”, but it doesn’t help as some running software is happy with 37.5 which it loaded from its PROGDIR:Libs... to figure out which program it is that holds the resource resident and clean up old versions of libs, fonts, classes, locales etc is left as an exercise for the user.

I please, someone, anyone... why is there no RequestString that just use ASL?

_________________
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@Hypex Quote:

Hypex wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Sorry, I don't get this scenario and why it shouldn't be POSIX-compliant. Bash shells have extensions that break POSIX compliance. I found this out the hard after writing a big script. I tested commands as working in the Bash shell and added it to my script as I went along. Then I found out when I ran the script it broke and something was wrong. It turned out I had written a mostly POSIX script, with a /bin/sh, then tried to put some Bashisms in it. I also needed at that point to work with a list or array. But arrays are a Bashism and not POSIX. I decided to leave it as pure POSIX and adapt it to what I needed. This link is a long but informative explanation as to what is POSIX. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DashAsBinSh This link is a short explanation of the differences. http://www.etalabs.net/sh_tricks.html

OK, I see now. However if you have POSIX-compliant scripts then there's should be no problem on Debian.

Worst case: just use bash instead of dash.

@matthey

Quote:

There already is a standard and it is not being followed enough. Most programs should use PROGDIR: and access directories and files relative to it (allows simpler installs and moving installed directories of programs too).

That's true. I wonder if people know about this. They've only had 20 years. There's some cases it doesn't work but in general use they wouldn't be common.

I've noticed that MultiViewer and MultiEdit both have assigns. I don't know why. MultiView and NotePad don't need assigns so why do those ones need it? It's also somehow inserted in my User-Startup near the top.

Quote:

Libraries and other modules shared by multiple programs go in directories which already have their assigns (maybe there should be a SYSLIBS: and LIBS: for example for better organization). Workbench 2.0 added support for PROGDIR: and the Amiga User Interface Style Guide specifies standards to be used. Is better programmer education needed or a certification for standards compliance?

Perhaps it is. There is already the standard layout provided before OS2.0 even. I would have found this out before I even start programming the Amiga. Resources like libraries and fonts can be localised. Most full apps had local LIBS and FONTS. No need to even even assign add a local LIBS drawer.

Quote:

There were a few programs which needed an assign like those started at bootup from the WBStartup drawer.

In that case big programs shouldn't have been started from there. Only ones that were self contained made sense in WBStartup. Things like commodities.

Quote:

There should be a GUI preference with drag and drop to add programs to start at bootup instead of moving them to WBStartup. This maintains the installation structure of these programs and avoids the need for an assign. I believe AmigaOS 4.1 added a new Start-up preferences feature which replaced the old WBStartup drawer like this?

Yes it did. A bit late perhaps. I ended up adding my own Startup drawer back without the "WB" prepended.

Though maybe WBStartup should have been a link drawer where links were made inside to it. They would have needed to add a system copy function though. That would have auto linked it both from Workbench and modern apps using the function.

The Mac had a neat feature. You would copy a resource to the System volume. And it ended up where it needed to be.

Quote:

Assigns in S:User-Startup should be user assigns for convenience and rarely, if ever, program installation assigns.

That's why it's called User-Startup. But they have never added one for programs. Nor a directory for easy mangement.

@kolla

Quote:

Resources like libraries, classes, fonts etc are a little nightmare... you start a program and it says it requires at least reqtools.library 38, and sure enough ?version reqtools.library? says you have 37.5 so you check libs: and you have 39.3, you try ?avail flush?, but it doesn?t help as some running software is happy with 37.5 which it loaded from its PROGDIR:Libs... to figure out which program it is that holds the resource resident and clean up old versions of libs, fonts, classes, locales etc is left as an exercise for the user.

In reality the system should have looked in the system LIBS first so it wouldn't be a problem if you had a later version in there.. However, those local resource directories are really meant for custom files. Something like Req tools was a third party library. And if it needed that then such a program really needs an installer. Installer handles all of that. Unfortunately it also uses LISP and so even today people want to use it but still wonder how on earth to use it and where the instructions are. A lot of installer scripts are big and complicated. Multi lingual ones get bloated out.

Quote:

I please, someone, anyone... why is there no RequestString that just use ASL?

I'm not sure what you mean. ASL handles file, font and screenmode requesters. By all accounts AHI should be on the list as well. Do you mean a similar command that can bring up an ASL requester?

Last edited by Hypex on 30-Oct-2020 at 04:11 PM.

@cdimauro

Quote:

OK, I see now. However if you have POSIX-compliant scripts then there's should be no problem on Debian.

In my case I was using Mint. And an older Ubuntu.

Quote:

Worst case: just use bash instead of dash.

I could have done that. In the end I decided to keep it to POSIX. But I kept the evil echo commands in. That was a first sign as well. I was getting different behaviour. I wanted it to be as clean and simple as possible. Sometimes having lesser features can simplify it as you need to do what you need in other ways which can be better in some ways. I found comparisons are simpler since bash needs things to be in double square brackets and other quirks. I was able to read lines in a file quite easily. Where I needed an array for file management, I could instead simply read lines instead. I ended up writing support functions that could rename, insert, remove or move items in a list. By using another support function that dynamically rebuilt the list and echoed the result into a variable. Which looked easier than if I had arrays and would have then needed to rearrange it with indexes.